


Alex's Tears

by Brownhairandeyes



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Kidnapping, Recovery, Self-Worth Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brownhairandeyes/pseuds/Brownhairandeyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex's thoughts while imprisoned on a mission and after-effects when he returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is in first person.

There are many types of tears; I know them all.

The thick pure, almost condensed tears of rage.  
The acute watering of the eyes that comes with white hot rage.  
The sharp pinpricks of fear.  
I can just remember the warm full tears that refresh the soul, that come from innocent joy and laughter.  
Days of innocent, happy bliss with Jack and Ian...  
But they are just a faint memory, echoes of a half recalled dream separated from my mind by twin barriers of time and bleak, harsh reality.

They are dead. I am not... yet.

The tears I know most intimately are the silent tears of shame.  
Silent because I still have some pride left in my battered bruised body. When you have nothing left you cling to what little you have.  
But also silent because if THEY hear, if they even know that I was crying it would be interpreted as weakness, or worse, resistance.  
I could take the consequences, I think, but the others, the children they kidnapped along with me...  
No, I will not inflict that on them. Even if they hate me and believe the worst, I won't betray them.

But one day I will not cry privately.  
I will cry openly with pride, and scream and curse them and not care about the future or of consequences. And fight without caring until the end.  
And they will be beautiful tears.

Of revenge, of justice. They are the same thing to me now. The barriers between black and white smeared into a grey mess inside my head. I try to tell myself that I did it for the best, that I'm not a monster. I know I'm lying to myself.  
I will wait here in the dark and the cold and endure the pain and the evil things that pry in the night.  
I will cling onto sanity with all my strength one more day, one more hour when I can so easily let go and fall into the forgiving embrace of madness.  
I lost hope of escape after a few weeks. The hope of rescue was ripped from me a few months later. Then hope itself was stolen from me.  
But I will wait: I will endure.  
For those beautiful tears.


	2. Chapter 2

Darkness is a spy's acquaintance, never a friend.

It conceals movement, deafens noise, protects from observation.  
It also disguises illusion, a factor Alex hadn't truly appreciated before now; it hid his grimy surroundings or gaping wounds from sight, making it easier to resist or ignore them (with the latter becoming more common as the days sapped his strength).

At one point Alex had, like most young children, had a fear of the dark – of what it could contain. Ian had dealt with by spending days teaching Alex the tell-tale shadows and noises that show if someone or something is really there. He also, when the house was swathed in darkness, showed Alex how to improve and keep his night-vision.

Funny how his relationship with the dark changes: at first scared of it (a basic instinct programmed into the body), then scared of what it might contain, then scared of what he knows it contains (faces swimming past him – assassins, spies, bodies of those he once knew). Until he gave up any hope for rescue, Alex was terrified of what the dark didn't contain, that he would never find a way out.

But now as he listens to the kidnapped children's voices and the emotions contained in them (not the words, never the words since the first month, words are easily twisted - voices less so) and feels the blood drip out of his body he is glad for the darkness. It is concealing the hopeless situation from the children and more importantly the twist of wire he managed to palm during the last session, Alex's anchor to sanity. It is deafening the spasms of pain that every careful movement of his broken hands causes. It is protecting his dignity and what little pride he has left.

So when the time comes, and Alex knows it will - for his stay has taught him patience - his captors won't see their deaths coming.  
And until then Alex won't acknowledge his death approaching as beautiful tears run down his face and meet the smile of vengeance on his face.


	3. A Doctor's impression (or Old eyes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Doctor in St. Dom's considers his patient.

The boy was old; he was just waiting for his body to realize it and catch up.

His movements were careful, each action economical as possible performed with such precision because it hurt to move so he did it as efficiently as possible. Lethal precision.  
When he stretched his breath became a little too controlled – if I hadn't be trained to look for such signs I would never have noticed – he was controlling the shortness of breath caused by the spasms of pain that racking his body.

His recovery was steady but lacked the... enthusiasm he had displayed in his first (of many) visits to Dom's. Something during his latest escapades had broken something inside him, not just the superficial injuries of broken bones and the like. The strange apathy reminded me of my great uncles' stories of soldiers who pleaded not to go back to the field were they would be forced to face the horrors of war once more.

I pause and look more closely at the adolescent who cannot be, it clear conscience, be called a child (a child would never had to endure such injuries). He's performing well at the moment: playing the restless teen yearning to be released from the confining hospital for the benefit of his friend. But this performance is what it is; only an act.

I've seen his face when he was too tired to keep up any façade, seen the ancient eyes of a warrior, a soldier, a … I can't bare to think of it, dare to believe that the mighty have fallen so far to resort to this injustice. But the way the name of his employers is wrapped in secrecy combined with his scared body tell the grisly, unpalatable truth.

As I watch him interact with his friend, his only friend (I noticed that as well during his stays - was isolation a move one his part or a forced decision?) I find myself wondering how many people's lives has this old-eyed manling ended, how much blood is on this unofficial government sanctioned assassin's hands, or whatever title they've bestowed on him.   
Then I shake myself; it is not my place to judge because I have never been forced into combat, seen what those eyes have seen, I don't know the full story.

But I do know the number of times the nurses have pleaded to give the poor boy sedatives as he writhes in the grip of some terrible nightmare and I have to refuse as I am bound by the strict instructions his employers give for their weapon. I know that his actions have their own punishment and I know it worse that any sentence the courts may give.

So I help him any way I can: dispensing the small amount of painkillers he is allowed often, allowing him visitors much earlier than I normally would to distract him, I try to pull him from the grim apathy that occasionally overwhelms him and give him as much privacy as I can when tears run down his face. I learned to value the brief moments of happiness or amusement that he enjoys and I try to accept his eyes as those of a veteran who despite everything hasn't quite given up.  
I learned to care for him, my patient, the child spy.

And because I care for him I will never mention the awful day when the grim-faced soldiers called me to treat him; when his whole body was bloody, tears streamed down his face, a twist of gore covered wire clenched in his hand. When there was no intelligence in those blue eyes, just feral instinct, and I sent the nurses and the guards away and spent the better part of 6 hours talking his sanity down from his mental cliff. Glad of the little psychology I had been taught, I used slow movements to avoid alarming him or make him categorize me as a threat, my constant murmuring helped him keep track of my position as well as being a constant link to the real world. How I managed to take his makeshift weapon out of his hands and get him into his bed I'll never know. But when he broke and shattered, when I held his hand giving vital human contact, I felt I had paid back a small portion of what our county owed him.  
But I hope I'll never see eyes that old again.


	4. Reflections and Images

He stared at mirror and saw a killer.  
Not that the mirror would tell (it was scared to).

He tried again.  
He looked at the mirror and saw crook, a fugitive, not running from the law but from justice of his own conscience, running from the blood on his hands.  
(Not that ever got to read Macbeth with the rest of his classmates).

No, he shook his head.  
He gazed at the mirror at the virtual image, an impeccable fake of an normal teenage boy who didn't really exist.  
(Or that's what the physics lessons he never got to attend didn't tell him).

He blinked. He tried to see what others saw.  
He admired the mirror and contemplated the attractive lie it told.  
A teenage boy, blond hair slightly dishevelled suggesting a roguish, popular character never lacking friends or easy companionship.  
A slightly too low tie knot implies that he is stylish but not rebellious.  
An winning smile suggests he has a bright future full of opportunities ahead of him.

He avoids looking into his own eyes, knowing he will recognize his true nature hiding inside.  
The scars: carefully hidden by long sleeves and a little of Smither's special cover-up that he quietly gave to Alex after he got out the hospital after the kid-

No! He told himself as the mirror's image started to blur, the façade of that happy young man breaking up. Don't think about that blood covered, gore filled, pain saturated time. Don't recall the way you were lost in the darkness and for the first time truly gave up. Don't call to mind those nightmares that are all to ready to attack and tear your mind apart. Don't.  
But it's too late.

Alex leaves the room not the schoolboy he wishes to be, but the hopeless druggie his peers paint him as.

He doesn't see the reflection in the mirror that tells the truth; a soldier at his breaking point, deserted by his allies, failed by his superiors, covered with not the gallons of blood he envisage but by the regrets and mistakes of others, his face shining with beautiful tears.

But they aren't beautiful, not really.  
He won't ever heal completely, not really.  
He isn't a murderer, not really.  
He isn't a tool forged in battle, not really.  
His life isn't over, not really.  
He's a human being, not a monster – but only just.  
(He wonders how long in will be before he relishes taking a life. He doesn't like this own answer. Not long.)


End file.
